STORY OF THE MAILS

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 280, 26 November 1938, Page 10 (Supplement)

STORY OF THE MAILS

THE story of the post through the ages is an inspiring topic for a historian, and the Rev. George Walker, in "Haste, Post, Haste" (Harrap) has written a comprehensive survey of the progress of mail-carrying from the earliest times down to the present day. Beginning with a chapter on Persian and Greek hoots, Mr. Walker elten the words of Herodotus, which have been carved on I lu> facade of the New York Post Office: "Neither snow nor heat nor gloom of iiiylit stays these couriers from the swift c oin |p|H inn of their appointed rounds." Kit dales tlic Iteyiiming of Kugliwh prmt to the year 1.">17, when Sir Brian Tuke was appointed Master of the Kind's I'ost.s, and from that date onwards tells tlie story of Knjrlish posts in great detail. Till 1784 the post wm carried on

horseback by post-boys; it was in that year that Palmer's revolutionary proposal instituted the mail coach. The mail coach era lasted only a bare 50 years before the railways took over the mail, but owing to the genius of such writers a* De Quincey, Dickens, and Thackeray a glow of glamour surrounds these romantic vehicles »and their literary associations have given them a prominence from a historical point of view greater than the£ deserve. At least three of De Quincey *s most characteristic essays are full of the glory of the mail coach, and many a character such as Mr. Weller lias immortalised the coaching days.

After Palmer the next gwat landmark was the introduction of the penny post by Rowland Hill. The loss to the revenue in the first year wan nearly a million pound*, and the supporters of th« schema w«r« naturally «ome-

what depressed; but their initial optimism was soon justified, and in twentyfive years the volume of packets posted had risen from five to forty-two per head of population. Mr. Hill concludes with chapters on the packet service, on Colonial and American mails, and on the air mails so recently instituted. There is an admirable story of one Mr. Ramage, the postmaster at Holyhead, who finding in 1800 that the packet had sailed without his_ letters, hired an open boat and nailed it across the Irish Sea in order that the mail might be delivered on The book is admirably illustrated with pictures old and new; but one feels that the author has been just a little prosaic in his treatment of a subject that had great possibilities; the facts are all there, and the book bears the mark of wide reading, yet the thrill it might have given is not quite there.